How Web Pollings and Recommendations Work
As a follow up to Her Majesty Avelina’s article on the awards process, Raffaella, the EK Web Minister, has shared some information about how web pollings and recommendations work behind the scenes.
Recommendations
Recommendations are submitted via an online recommendation form. When a recommendation is submitted, the “Thank You” page is a confirmation that the submission has been received, and my e-mail contact information is provided if you would like me to verify the submission. If you have any concerns, questions, or inquiries, please contact me through that e-mail address, and I will respond to you within 24 hours.
Every two weeks, I generate a report to provide these recommendations to the crown, and then send that report for the royals. The data is produced in an Excel document broken down into polling and non-polling orders. The data is then sorted by award, other, gentle’s name, and the date the recommendation was sent in.
The recommendations that are then included in the pollings sent to the orders are at the discretion of the crown. The crown may modify, shorten, or reformat a write-up before it is sent to the polling order.
Pollings
Once the Royals provide the information, I build a web link survey for each polling order. This tool for the polling order creates an ongoing record of individuals who have been recommended for an award and who may have been polled for an award. Since the pollings have gone to web links for recommendations, the amount of respondents to the polls has jumped significantly. The polling data and links are secure, and I am the only person with access to them. I do not, under any circumstances, discuss the results of a polling or who was on a polling. In addition, all polling links are not connected to any web search engines.
Individuals receive the link to the polling by being a registered member of their order(s). If you are not receiving any emails from your polling order, contact the Web Minister and they will get the problem solved as soon as possible. The polling link can be provided by the Polling Administrator (Duchess Katherine).
The web pollings also allow a participant to submit as many times as they want, if they would like to change or modify their recommendation. The only recommendation that is recorded is the last recommendation. Members of a polling order must provide a valid SCA name, mundane name, and e-mail address, which I cross check to verify that only one recommendation is counted for each participant.
The results of the polling are provided to the Royals (and only the Royals) whose polling it is, and it is at their discretion if the results are published to the orders.
If there are any other questions about recommendations or pollings, please contact Raffaella.